Third Session's Student Assessment Report

This is what I noticed about my students' performances during the third implementation session:

Johanna has improved a bit in the use of affirmative statements especially in conjugating the Subject + Verb agreement but she had more problems producing the regular and irregular verbs because she took more risks in implementing new ones in this conversation. She also omitted the auxiliary DID when she formulated some questions. However, she has improved the use of the verbs TO BE in past although Juan noticed that she still had problems using them during some passages of the conversation. Therefore, I believe that Johanna is starting to raise awareness of this aspect. She still needs to work on negative statements and asking questions.


Examples:

• No one was hurt/ We were at the hospital (Verb TO BE in past)

• The police picked up the body? (Question)

Fabiola improved her performance compared to the previous one. She was more careful in using the irregular verbs and switching tenses (from past to present). She also tried to use new verbs in past tense and she had some of them right. Although she did not use many negative statements during the interaction, she was completely accurate when she used these structures. She struggled in asking accurate questions in the past tense, but I consider that she was still in the awareness raising stage. She suffered a slight backslide in terms of conjugating Subject + Verb, but she made fewer errors in using the irregular and regular verbs. She started to pronounce the ED endings more accurately.


Examples:

• I don’t have anything accident in my life.

• I was staying for two hours.

This was Andres’s best performance in terms of accuracy. He used the irregular verbs more accurately, he formed full-length utterances and he also used the negative auxiliary verbs accurately most of the times. Andres’s main problem still is formulating accurate questions.


Johanna mentioned the opposite in terms of using the verb To Be and the past auxiliaries incorrectly.

Diana showed a little progress in terms of being accurate in using some verbs in the past tense. She still needs to learn more verbs in the past tense and to pronounce the ED endings in order to minimize her mistakes. Finally, Diana needs to organize the parts of speech when she constructs complements. Maritza noticed the same as I did.

In this interaction, Claudia managed to use more irregular verbs correctly and she was more coherent in organizing complements. She has also managed to reduce the number of mistakes when she conjugated the Subjects with the Verbs.


Andres pointed out that Claudia had some problems between the use of WAS and WERE

Third Implementation Session Feedback

In this session, I was surprised that most of the students had improved in the use of the verbs in past tense, although I also noticed some stagnation and backdrift in other ones. For instance, Johanna, Claudia, Andres, Maritza, Adriana and Michael have considerably improved in constructing affirmative sentences in past tenses. However, I observed a significant backdrift with Fabiola and stagnation in the cases of Diana, Leonardo and Juan. Johanna, Andres and Claudia told me that they have made an effort in studying for the daily quizzes. Whereas for the rest, they have informed me that they do not have time to study since they have other responsibilities during the day. The majority of the students are still having trouble using the auxiliary verbs in simple past when they are constructing negative statements and questions. Most of the students have become more aware of conjugating the subjects and verbs since they have confessed they tend to translate a lot so there is an overgenerlization of not using IT when referring to objects or abstract nouns. I will train students to use the finger correction technique to keep track of of each part of speech when they are employing negative statements and questions.

Worries and concerns

Image retrieved from Google images in June 25,2010

I have had problems with this group in terms of autonomy. For most of them it is really difficult to do their basic homework assignments from their workbooks and even coming to class early. They argued that they do not have enough time to do their homework assignments even on weekends (which I consider a big excuse). I have constantly talked to them about autonomy and its implications in adult learning (andragogy). It is quite difficult for them to set up their own learning goals and to take action in order to improve their skills. This issue also affects my research project because most of them are not using the disscussion board to listen to their partners and to leave comments there. I even changed the system by allowing students write their comments in Nabble, which is an embeddable forum, but some of them do not post their comments, or if they do, they tend to be too broad as they do not especifically point out what their partners' problems are. Since they are too teacher dependent, they expect me to do this type of feedback through the forums or by telling them something about their progress during the weekly assessment (that is the time when I turn in the rubrics). I have had some issues with a couple of my students (Michael and Maritza) because their expectations regarding progress is too high and their committment towards autonomony and in implementing the strategies has been too low.

I have been reading about fossilization lately and there is one author (Han, 2004) who says that there are two linguistic phenomenons in the SLA process called "learning plateau" and "backsliding". The first one refers to the slowing down their learning processes due to some determining factors such as brain plasticity, learning styles, pedagogical beliefs, autonomy and the implementation of more sophisticated learning strategies which help them upgrade their linguistic skills. "Backsliding" means the "reemergence of deviant forms that seemed to have been eradicated" so it is only natural that learners are going through an acquisition stage that demands more from them than the teacher himself. As it is only obvious, these students are not taking these considerations for granted and in my opinion they are trying to take the easy way out by blaming me that there has not been a "dramatical" progress in their learning process.

Another problem I had this week is that Adriana, one of my best students, had to drop out because she has had some family issues that prevent her from continuing the course. This was a sensible loss since she has been making real progress and she believed in my approach to help her improve speaking accuracy.

Third Implementation

Image retrieved from Google Images on June 23, 2010

Today I implemented for the third time. It was smoother than the other two times because students are familiar with the exercise's procedures. As the other two previous times, students worked with their usual speaking partner because this way is easier to code each student. The only difference was that I insisted students to record their comments in Voxopop, but students did not have time to listen to their classmates' comments nor they did not have time to write their comments in the forum. I have noticed that not all the students have been disciplined writing their reflections so I guess that I will have to start giving them face-to-face feedback when I turn in their rubric right after each recording so they know exactly how they have progressed or to inform them what extra work they need in order to improve the usage of the verbs in simple past and past continuous.

A couple of my students helped the new student (Vicky) to open her Voxopop account and to inform her how the activity works.

Second Session's Student Assessment Report

The following are my impressions about each of my students' performances:

Johanna reduced the number of errors a little because by that time she was just beginning the awareness raising process. During the first conversation she was not aware of using the verbs in past tense. Although she has not improved in the usage of the irregular verbs in the second conversation, she has tried to improve the regular verbs in spite of having problems pronouncing the ED endings. She also improved using the negative statements in past but she still has a lot of problems constructing questions accurately.


Johanna was able to raise awareness in the Subject + Verb agreement and experimenting with new irregular verbs successfully such as SAW, WON, TOOK and ATE. She also self and peer corrected a couple of times during the conversation.

Johanna did use the past continuous but the sentences were mostly inaccurate.

Examples:

• You lean about your behavior. (Possessive adjective)

• How much did you paid for this trip? (Formulating questions)

Fabiola continued monitoring the use of the past tenses though she made a few more mistakes than the previous conversation. She used the negative statements and asked questions correctly most of the times. In this conversation in particular, she did not have any problems conjugating the Subject with the verbs in past tense, but it was evident that she needed to learn more irregular verbs and the use of auxiliary verbs in questions.


Examples:

• Where was did you go on your last vacation?

• Because I sell a lot of Decameron hotels and they give me a prize.

Andres demonstrated once more that he is not making any progress at all in learning any irregular verbs in the past tense and in improving his pronunciation of the ED endings with the regular verbs. However, he improved a little in terms of using negative statements although he was accurate 50% of the times and inaccurate in the other 50%. What surprised me was that he was more accurate in formulating questions.


Leina also noticed that Andres was highly inaccurate in using the verbs in past tense in both regulars and irregulars. Andres is not doing a lot of the homework I assigned him during this cycle.

In this conversation, Claudia took more risks and produced more utterances than the previous interaction. Although she still makes mistakes in using the regular and irregular verbs, she managed to raise some awareness in the proper use of some of these verbs.


I noticed that she used the auxiliary verbs correctly in order to make negative statements, but she had problems using them when asking questions. Andres noticed that Claudia had some problems with some irregular verbs.

Second Implementation Session Feedback

There was a major participation in the second forum. Students maily focused on their partners' errors while they interacted with their classmates. They noticed errors in some irregular verbs and in the construction of negative statements and questions. I have noticed that they all have problems pronouncing the ED ending in regular verbs and they hardly ever use the past continuous to tell their stories. I noticed that Fabiola, Maritza and Michael master many irregular verbs they still has problems pronouncing the ED endings. Although some students are still struggling retrieving the verbs in past participle, most of them have succesfully managed to experimenting with new ones, but they still forget to use some of them or sometimes they implement them correctly and other times not. Most of them have problems in terms of conjugating the subject + verb agreement especially with the pronoun IT. For the next upcoming sessions I will have to quiz students in the use of the verbs they are supposed to know by now but they are not using properly during the recorded interactions as well as the new verbs they have been exposed to during each lesson in order to compare the levels of learning and acquisition (Krashen, 1983).

Starting Skills 2

I started the new course today and there were few changes in terms of population. Three students who started the course had left because they had problems with their schedules (Leina, Marcela and Javier). However, there is a new student in the group and she signed the consent letter (Victoria). She will take the initial test this week.